


Hell Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

by lynnenne



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-25 10:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynnenne/pseuds/lynnenne





	Hell Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

_Inspired by the play_ Huis Clos _by Jean-Paul Sartre. Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine._

 

After the battle, they both wake up at exactly the same moment. Spike's not sure how he knows this, but he does, just as he knows that Angel is with him. He can’t see Angel in the traditional sense, but he can _see_ him, as if Angel has somehow merged with the gray fog that surrounds their senses, permeates their eyes, ears and noses.

They don’t have bodies, not as such. Spike can hold his hand in front of his face, cover his eyes, and he feels his arm moving as if it’s built of muscle and bone. But there’s no sensation of air against his skin. And even weirder, he can see Angel’s hand in front of his face along with his own.

Maybe it’s not real—magic, or a dream, or maybe Spike has conjured up Angel in his head because he’s being held prisoner by Wolfram & Hart and has finally gone mad with the boredom. Maybe he’s a bit of bread moving through the devil’s digestive system. But if he is, then Angel is too. I annoy, therefore I am.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Angel asks, and Spike hears the words as if Angel is inside his head, not floating next to/in/around him.

“Saw you burn up when the dragon sneezed on you. You?”

“You were running toward me, and some big ugly thing next to me raised his sword and cut your head off.”

Spike looks around, or maybe gropes around. It’s hard to tell which sense is which. There is no one else here, and never has been. “So. Trapped in some floaty gray dimension, privy to the inside of each others’ noggins.”

Neither one of them needs to say it, but they both chorus, “We’re in hell.”

 

 

*

“Great. Eternity floating in a jar with no one but you for company.” Angel can watch Spike’s lips moving as he speaks, but he can’t punch that pretty mouth, or kiss it, or bite it and make it bleed.

“Gotta say,” Spike continues, “old Lucifer’s got imagination.”

Angel wholeheartedly agrees. Even during his evil days, he never could have crafted a punishment this inventive. “It’s a masterpiece.”

Spike rolls his eyes, and they seem to flip 360 degrees in his head. “Leave it to you to admire the villainy of it all.”

For a while that could be an hour or forever, Spike chews on his lip and is quiet. Quiet Spike means only one thing. He’s scared. Angel’s scared, too, but mostly because this trip to hell is nothing at all like his last one.

“Maybe it’s not hell?” Spike offers hopefully. “Maybe it’s purgatory. We float here for a while until we’ve paid for our sins, and then we get to stop.”

Angel shakes his head, and he can feel the movement but not. “Purgatory has cleansing fire.”

Spike is silent for another eternity. “You got burned up by the dragon. And I burnt in the hellmouth.”

“That only lasted a few seconds,” Angel replies. “We’d have to burn for centuries to make up for all our sins.”

Spike frowns, looking at ground and sky at the same time. “Felt like centuries when I was burning.”

“Me, too,” Angel whispers.

 

 

*

“Touch.”

“Fighting.”

“Cars.”

“People.”

“The sound of anything other than my own voice, or yours.”

Infinity passes but doesn’t. Time doesn’t mean anything in this strange place where Spike’s eyes are the color of mist and Angel’s skin permeates the known universe.

“C’mon. What else do you miss?” They’ve played this game an endless number of times and never played it before. The answers are always different and always the same. Cordy Wes Gunn Buffy Fred.

“Even Illyria,” Angel says.

“Even Xander bloody Harris.”

Angel scowls. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

Spike chuckles. Then his face grows serious. Angel can tell by the way the fog dims.

“Love,” Spike murmurs.

Angel is quiet for another eternity, then adds, “Sex.”

Spike quirks a watery eyebrow. “You barely got any for the last hundred years. Think you’d be used to missing it by now.”

“Yeah, but I could always screw you to pass the time.”

Spike flips Angel off. He’s floating upside-down, so the effect is kind of lost.

“Music,” Spike adds.

“I could sing for you,” Angel smirks.

“Don’t you bloody dare! Even Satan isn’t that cruel.”

Angel lies down on his side just to change the view, but the view never changes. Spike is still in his line of sight, and the fog still rolls. It isn’t hard or soft to lie upon. It’s neither solid nor gas, warm nor cold. It just feels like nothing.

“Connor,” Angel whispers to himself, but every noise in here resonates at the same volume.

Spike scowls with Angel’s face. “Still can’t believe you didn’t tell me about him.”

“I didn’t tell anybody about him.”

“Yeah, but we’re family, Angel!”

Angel rolls away, but Spike is still there. “Every family has its secrets.”

“Not ours,” Spike observes. “Least ways, not anymore.”

The earth makes another revolution around the sun and Spike asks, “Tell me about him?”

Angel wants to sigh, but he doesn’t feel tired. “Spike, you’re living inside my head. You already know everything there is to know.”

“Tell me anyway,” Spike says. So Angel smiles, and weeps, and does.

 

 

*

Millennia later, Angel frowns and notices, “I don’t miss the blood.”

Spike thinks about this and realizes, “Me, neither.”

“I thought I would, you know? All those years when I had a soul, I missed the violence. Killing and torturing people for the fun of it.”

“Angel, you hated yourself for missing it.”

“But I did. Miss the evil.” Angel looks at him, and Spike can see both Angel and himself, somehow. “I don’t anymore. What’s that about?”

Spike shrugs. “Personal growth?”

As soon as he says it, Spike knows this is wrong. In here, nothing grows or changes.

“Still feel guilty though, don’t you? For everything you did.”

Angel merely nods.

“Never did get an apology for what you did to me in that wheelchair,” Spike grumps.

“You never apologized for running me through with hot pokers,” Angel retorts.

They both feel a pang of guilt at the same moment, which says everything for them.

Angel sighs and looks around at their endless and tiny world. “Little late for repentance now, isn’t it?”

Spike isn’t Catholic, but he knows it’s true. The sacrament of confession is useful only to those who can still be saved.

 

 

*

“Wonder why Darla’s not here?” Spike muses one day after all the stars go out. “Where do you think she ended up?”

Angel has no answer for that, so he doesn’t try to form one.

“Or Drusilla?” Spike asks.

“Dru’s in heaven,” Angel replies. Of this, he’s certain. “Not guilty by reason of permanent insanity.”

Spike sees the truth of this. “Guess you’re paying for all her sins too, aren’t you?”

“You among them.” Angel rubs his cheek and feels Spike’s fingers against his face. “Guess that’s why they stuck us together.”

Spike rolls onto his back and folds his hands behind his head. Angel feels neither spine nor fingers, but he sees the gray sky with Spike’s eyes.

“Think we’ll like each other by the end of it all?” Spike wonders.

Angel sighs, and now he _is_ tired. “There is no end,” he says simply.

They both know this. Because Spike is Angel’s cross, and Angel is Spike’s torment, and for all that one is a ponce and the other an idiot, and one is a malevolent artist and the other a bad poet and _I am nothing like him_ choruses through the universe in stereo—for all that, they know each other, and they did long before they ever got here. Eternal suffering is looking at yourself in the mirror every day and knowing you can never change the view.

Angel remembers the line from Sartre, “Hell is other people,” and Spike remembers it at the same time, even though he never saw the play.

Despite the dull gray light, Angel can see a twinkle in Spike’s eye when he says, “Guess I never have to tell you that I like you, then.”

Angel smiles back, a Cheshire smile floating on the air. “No,” he acknowledges. “No, you never do.”


End file.
